The problem, critics said, is that UC has developed Gump Station on Moorea Island near Tahiti as a sweet deal for academic insiders while, at the same time, hiking already high tuition due to state budget deficits.

UC officials dismissed criticism, saying study of the tropics is important to the fight against global warming and that the station is a bargain.

Students and professors pay a

UC-subsidized price of about $40 per person nightly for a waterfront bungalow, says a facility Web site. Nearby five-star resorts on Moorea, which is a popular destination for honeymooners, charge up to about $900 a night for an over-water bungalow on piles.

Sen. Jim Battin, a Palm Desert Republican who has long fought to get the state to sell surplus land, said “subsidizing resort life is not an appropriate use of public funds.”

Looking at an aerial picture of the station, Battin added sarcastically, “Look at all those research vessels down there — those little canoes.” Battin, other GOP lawmakers and taxpayer groups have long fought for retention of only essential state land, saying cash-strapped California can’tafford anything else.

California Taxpayers’ Association spokesman David Kline said “there should be serious scrutiny of this facility” by the Legislature to determine “if the research is benefiting taxpayers.”

“Most Californians would be shocked to find out they are subsidizing a South Pacific getaway for UC professors at a time when government should be economizing and scrutinizing every penny spent,” Kline said.

Critics cite the potential high value of the donated 35-acre island parcel. The seller of a small, nearby parcel with three thatched cottages, for example, wants $1.9 million.

“This year we’re giving pink slips out to teachers while we have a piece of property in French Polynesia,” said Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria. “It makes no sense.”

Information about the station emerged during a MediaNews analysis of California’s largely failed effort to sell surplus, underused or unneeded land to lower persistent, multibillion-dollar state deficits.

University officials said the facility is funded mostly by user fees, along with grants from the federal government and private foundations. The Schwarzenegger administration said the station is receiving about $250,000 in UC support this year.

Beth Burnside, vice chancellor for research at UC Berkeley, who oversees Gump Station, said it is contributing to global warming research.

“It’s quite a bargain,” Burnside said. “There’s not any consideration, whatsoever, of selling off that property.”

Visitors, who include researchers from outside the UC system, pay subsidized rates.

“The base rates are calculated to recover the full cost of operating the Gump Station,” the station’s Web site says. But it also says: “The University of California, however, subsidizes operations and thus most users are not charged the full cost rate.”

UC officials said user fees have recently fallen short, forcing a rate hike this fiscal year that is expected to begin making up the deficit.

In the future, officials said, the system plans to cut back UC support and rely more heavily on user fees for operating expenses.

The property was donated to UC in 1981 by Richard Gump of San Francisco, a wealthy department store magnate.

In recent years, grants have been used to expand the property to the size where it can host conferences. It now includes labs, dorms, a library, waterfront and hillside bungalows with kitchens, several vehicles and boats.

The station has launched an ambitious, grant-funded cooperative project between U.S. and French researchers to “barcode” — or inventory — all nonmicrobial life from the bottom of the ocean to the mountaintops.

Neil Davies, the resident executive director, said in an e-mail that the island “offers all of the complexities, problems and challenges of global change faced by much larger land masses and ecosystems, yet on a scale that can be more readily defined and analyzed.”

The station is open to professors, long-term researchers and graduate students from any university or research institution for field-based scientific projects in an array of academic fields, according to the station’s Web site.

The station also hosts undergraduate courses, ranging from archeology field school to environmental economics within the tropical environment of French Polynesia.

Professors and others must apply for access to the station and be accepted, then follow standardized rules and policies for research.

Researchers have posted findings from a variety of projects on the Internet. And UC has recently issued news releases touting a project that eradicated the glassy-winged sharpshooter pest in the area and findings that tiny “housekeeper” crabs keep coral in the reefs healthy.

Like several other UC researchers, Rosemary Gillespie said she regularly visits. She flies from the Bay Area to Tahiti, then takes a 25-minute ferry ride to Moorea.

“It’s a spectacular place,” she said.

Gillespie teaches students how to launch their own research projects at the island, so the students can return to conduct their own projects.

The university makes it clear, however, that the station isn’t just about work. Its Web site carries information about recreation: Station equipment, such as vehicles and boats, are available for trips.

Student blogs carry advice for free time.

One rates the “bests” — events not to miss, drives, views, “funnest” places to eat, pizza and ice cream.

And the best party spot: Manhattan Club, in Papeete, on nearby Tahiti.